Doujin Visual Novel Reviews

Alongside Blind Prism ~Rainy Season~, Kare to Kanojo no Koi no Sankaku (from here on out, I’ll refer to it as just “KKKS”) is one of the few games I purchased during my monthly(-ish) DL Site shopping expeditions. Priced at just a mere 108 yen, I had even less expectations in KKKS than I did with Blind Prism. Just like Blind Prism, I’m sad to report that I had a baaad time with KKKS. Even moreso than with Blind Prism! The reason why I decided to try this game out (other than because it’s cheap, of course) was because it was created by Skip>>. Skip>> created Sensei no Goshujin-sama, which wasn’t too shabby.

The premise is very simple- the protagonist, Kugami Chika, is best friends with Takaoka Natsuo, and adores Natsuo. However, Natsuo is close to Satou Keita, who Chika dislikes. In order to be able to hang around Natsuo more, Chika tries to become better friends with Keita. As the story progresses, a love triangle emerges and complicates their relationship with each other. Unlike most otome games, and VNs involving love triangles in general, this is a kinetic VN. A kinetic VN is one in which the player simply reads through the text, and isn’t required to make choices or stat-raise. In other words, you merely read how the situation gets resolved, rather than having an active role in choosing who ends up with who.

Blind Prism ~Rainy Season~ is the second release of doujin circle Ka*Kuu. It also is the second release in the Blind Prism series, though the website dictates that you don’t have the play the first game (Blind Prism ~Before Sweets~) in order to better enjoy ~Rainy Season~. From here on out, I’ll be referring to this game as just “Blind Prism”. The story is about the evolution of Kuronagi Mikoto and her overprotective older brother Wakazumi’s relationship. After Mikoto meets with the school nurse, Nikaidou Shinobu, Wakazumi and Mikoto’s relationship begins to change. Anyway, I got the download edition of Blind Prism from DL Site’s Girl’s Maniax section (some content is NSFW) here for 324 yen, encouraged by the positive reviews it had received. At roughly $3.25 AUS, I certainly wasn’t expecting things from it like I would with games by bigger companies, but I was still disappointed. While it isn’t an exceptionally bad game, it is far, far from good. I’ll be going into detail on why it ended up being such a mediocre game- in my humble opinion, of course.